Traditionally, containers, such as soda cans and bottles, have been cleaned by merely rinsing them out with clean, pressurized water. Once the pressurized water has been turned on, the flow of water could be depended upon to continue during packaging operations.
Recently another type of container cleaner has gained acceptance in the industry. These systems clean the containers with compressed air instead of water. They have been proven to clean containers significantly better than the water-type cleaning systems and include the additional advantages of reduced water and sewerage charges.
The air cleaners use compressed air, blowers, flow meters, static control systems, liquid detectors, and filtering systems to accomplish the cleaning. After the container enters a cleaning chamber, the compressed air is directed through a nozzle into the container to dislodge foreign solids and fluids. A pressure blower and a vacuum blower act in conjunction to continuously exchange the air within the cleaning chamber to remove the air contaminated with these foreign solids and fluids. The vacuum blower removes the contaminated air from the cleaning chamber while the pressure blower continuously supplies clean filtered air to replace the contaminated air removed from the cleaning chamber. Because of the increased complexity of the cleaning system it is prone to hidden failures which can lead to the filling of unclean containers. The sale of products packaged in these unclean containers can lead to injuries to end users and increased costs for packing facilities through increased product liability claims, as well as, losses in sales. It would be a benefit, therefore, to have a method or device for monitoring the operation of the elements within an air cleaner system which would either alert an operator of the existing conditions or halt operation of the air cleaner until corrective measures have been taken.